proper use of the subjunctive

would that it were

so simple,

as popping the present

political pustulence

like a pimple.

and this acme

of sleaze and bigotry

cleansed and micro-scrubbed

off our national face

like a case of acne.

if we could but

open the spigot

and wash away the rot,

would that it were

so simple, but it's not.

Hunger

I don't know what day it is.

just another day

as blanched of flavor

as grandma's boiled peas.

The gray hour.

The newsprint on the porch

is still warm from the delivery guy's

dented Honda's front seat.

He was listening to death metal

and getting donut sugar

all down his Raiders jersey.

The paper hit the porch today

with a satisfying splat.

He never reads the paper he tosses,

it's just a another shitty job.

Better than washing dishes

at Arby's though.

A least no asshole manager

always crawling up his ass.

I know what that's like.

I used to throw the news

out the window of a beater Honda too.

But I had better music.

The ink today is full of exuberant reports

of tanks and flags and toppled statues.

The guy in line at Rite Aid yesterday,

getting his Lipitor and Viagra refills,

was reminiscing warmly about his war

when Saigon spread her legs for him.

I pitied him. Until I remembered mine.

I have a thousand echos

of top 40 hits, I must have

heard a thousand times,

all those years ago.

Those laments and jubilations

pickled in every cell,

when I drove like a robot on

four-in-the-morning streets

flinging yesterday's news

and overnight scores

out the window

with a satisfying splat.

I don't know what day it is,

but the masthead says it's Friday.

Maybe after work I'll wash my car

and drive out to the coast.

Play all those songs

I got so tired of back then.

Pretend that I am young.

Flying Saucers

I didn't have a Frisbee 

in 1963.

They were still called

the Pluto Platter.

and not well known.

But I liked to sling the lids

of Folgers Coffee cans,

being careful

not to slice a finger

on the edge.

One day I sailed one

across the street.

Just as a kid

from up the block

rode by on his Schwinn.

He had a flat top haircut

stiffened up with butchwax.

The lid skimmed 

right across his hair

and landed on

the fighter jet captain's lawn

across the street.

The kid never saw it coming.

Just ran his hand across his hair

as if he'd been buzz bombed

by a sparrow.

Three years later I was earning

a couple dollars a week cutting lawns.

Promises

he felt like he was walking

on marshmallows -or cotton balls-

as he stepped under

the faux tuscan villa arch,

an artful simulation of a ruin,

to speak his marriage vows.

the world swirled

through his dizzy mind:

the late september sun

a bit too warm

for his thirty dollar

blue corduroy suit from Sears,

the frog-faced minister's words 

crowded by the excited

calling of a crow perched

in the oak that shaded

the table where platters

of finger food awaited

the reception.

a couple whispered

and giggled as they passed a joint.

some white-haired out-of-towners

from the valley glared at them.

so this is what it feels like:

to be thoroughly enveloped

in an infinite and endless now.

until the years of unpaid bills

and unshared distractions,

her mysticism,

and his midnight walking,

his secret thrill when

the pixie-haired girl in the office

began giving him the eye.

because flirting doesn't hurt

he told himself. until it did.

but not as much as his spouse's

afternoon rendezvous

with the unemployed painter

and his back-to-the-fifties splatter.

so when he met a copy writer

with a knack for jazz and oral sex,

his decades of devotion

eroded from rote endearments

and tiptoed down the road to lies.

forever is easier to promise

when you're twenty-five.

tears and diamonds

her tears gleamed

when her diamond ring

disappeared down

the garbage disposal.

a crystal streak

slid down her cheek

as she recalled

her wedding,

when her sweet groom

had slipped it on her finger.

now it's been eight days

since they last spoke,

the thin comfort

of his bad jokes broken

when the hospital

was bombed.

she understood his position,

that as a pediatric physician,

he felt duty bound to help

the children whelped

by the dogs of war.

or so she told

the empty pillow

on his side of the bed.

when the groan

of the disposal faded away,

she wormed a soapy hand

into it's bowels,

squirmed naked fingers

in the lemon rinds

and carrot peels

feeling for the ring.

felt the slender circle

and gasped when she

fished the sparkling emblem

from the muck,

somehow unbitten

by the teeth of the machine.

her phone was chiming

in the pocket of the apron

where it rested warm and close

next to her breast. hello?

no. not at all, dear,

i was just doing the dishes.

angkor wat

I saw the black-winged butterfly

gently sip the rain that dripped

from the weathered sandstone eye

of the smiling long dead king.

Eight hundred years had passed

before the jungle was stripped

from the ruins at last

and the feast was set

for three million cell phones

to eat and tweet,

add our own sweet faces

to the remnants of rotting empire.

A reminder of the transience

of glory, the power of storms

and vines to erode our monuments

become a home for sky blue lizards

and urchins who plead in many tongues:

mr handsome man, buy my postcards.

ten for a dollar, mr handsome man.

buy my postcards, see?

seasoning

Sugar and scarlet grains of chili,

make a nice seasoning for the mild,

not-quite-apple taste of guava.

Much of life is appetite.

For the weathered stone

of temples and churches.

For yellow-feathered singers

clinging to the air root drapery 

dangling from the banyans.

For slap of wavelets

against river walls,

so like the timeless

sound of coupling.

And the memory of other,

plumeria-scented nights

-refreshed.